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Dodging sound cannons, gone to interbike.

The guys over at urbanvelo.org were wise to get out of there home town of Pittsburgh last weekend. The world’s leaders were gathered for the G20 summit and felt so threatened by a few people demonstrating these silly little things like their constitutional rights that they:
Called in 4000 police officers, used pepper spray, tear gas and sound cannons on people who weren’t even near the delegates.

If you want to protest in America these day’s under the supposed “Hope” and “Change” president Obama, you can expect tactics and behavior like this form law enforcement:

Police dressed in Camoflauge randomly kidnapping you:

Using you for a trophy photo:(Video of this has been removed from Youtube because of police embarrassment)

and if there aren’t any demonstrators willing to riot…the cops will dress up like them and start the riots themselves:

3 comments to Dodging sound cannons, gone to interbike.

Re: the G20 protests – are you seriously suggesting that the federal government should be held accountable for the actions of local police? The sound cannons and tear gas were in response to protestors rolling dumpsters down the street at police lines. The ‘abduction’ is a pretty standard way of getting undercover plants out of protests, and the photo op thing… well, that’s definitely shitty but to compare getting your photo taken by cops in a public area is a little different than being literally tortured.

The reason the LaRouche nutbags are able to protest without being harassed by police is because they’re just protesting with legal firearms (which is insane, but that’s America), not smashing things up and trying to disrupt the city.

I am suggesting this. The federal government is the police and chiefly responsible for implementing these tactics of crowd control. According to the news, the local police in Pittsburgh were not the problem, it was the outside officers and federal government brought in to harass and intimidate American citizens. I’ve witnessed this behavior for 10 years of demonstrations since the WTO in Seattle. My point is, allow people to demonstrate, to march and to exercise their first amendment rights. If you see people pushing dumpsters into the streets or engaged in property destruction…here is my advice for law enforcement…arrest them. Wow, that’s so simple. Instead the police find it much better to use non-lethal tactics on people, let them run amok, create property destruction and then justify their actions on a couple of frustrated kids. Are you suggesting that 4000 police officers can’t handle 20 people in black masks pushing dumpsters in the streets?

I’m trying to illustrate a point that this is not Iraq. People should have the right to protest and I shouldn’t have to be watching videos after every demonstration about how the police violate our constitutional rights. One thing leads to another and soon you aren’t allowed to have a group bike ride in New York City.

I’m a little late getting to this blog post. Nice write up. I gotta say, I’m really upset at how the G20 went down. The police went on the offensive with little to no regard for the greater public, assaulting and arresting non-protesters and teargassing infants and the elderly.